How to use the TT ‘Dynamic Range’ Meter – and where to get it

2015 Update

I knew it was a great tool and immediately wanted to share it with everyone I knew.

Since then, I’ve used it myself almost every working day, and this post has consistently been one of the most popular on my site.

The TT Meter is still great, and this post still tells you how to use it, and where to get it.

BUT

It’s been 6 years.

Since then, the new ITU loudness standards have become mainstream, and give much more reliable readings of perceived loudness.

The TT Meter uses plain RMS levels, which tend to over-react when there is lots of bass in the audio, in comparison to what our ears tell us.

That’s why I developed a brand new plugin, called Dynameter, with MeterPlugs.

It takes the key functionality of the TT Meter, updates it to use the new international standards and adds some unique new features. I’m delighted with the end result, and the response we’ve got is fantastic. To find out more, click here.

Or, simply carry on reading to find out about the original TT Meter !

First things first

The TT so-called “dynamic range” meter doesn’t really measure dynamic range at all. BUT it is still an invaluable tool for mixing and mastering, and gives you useful feedback on the ‘dynamics’ of your music and how it measures up in the loudness wars – so keep reading !

A little background

Loudness has always been an important topic in mixing, and especially mastering – never more so than today.

Knowing how loud is too loud has always been difficult. I’ve written before about how we hear loudness, and different software solutions for measuring loudness – but several years ago, everything was made far easier.

A new tool was released, purpose-designed for judging the ‘loudness’ of music. You can now see at a glance how ‘loud’ your mix is, make informed decisions about your use of compression and limiting, and choose to make your recordings punchy, loud and competitive.

The TT Meter

This tool is the TT ‘Dynamic Range’ Meter, released by the Pleasurize Music Foundation. It comes in two flavours – the one in the animation above is the real-time plugin version, available for both Mac and PC in AU, RTAS and VST versions.

There is also a second, off-line version of the meter, which generates an overall DR measurement for a complete WAV file or CD and allows you to generate a log file which can be submitted to the (unofficial) Dynamic Range Database.

How it works

The real-time plugin version shows peak and RMS level metering for the left and right channels, but also the difference between them – in the centre, labelled “DR“.

Broadly speaking, the idea is to stop this DR measurement getting too low – up to a point, at least.

DR stands for “dynamic range”, although that’s not really an accurate name. The DR value is actually closer to the “crest factor” of the music – the difference between the peak and RMS levels. This measurement is unique to the TT Meter, and is extremely useful because it gives an intuitive idea of how “squashed” the music is. The closer the RMS level gets to the peak level (usually close to 0 dBFS) the more compressed and limited the music is likely to be, and the smaller the DR measurement gets.

How to read the meter

Peak level, loudness and “DR” are all measured in Decibels (dB) . Very ‘dynamic’ material – raw acoustic recordings, for example – will often read DR14 or more, whereas heavily compressed and limited ‘loudness war casualties’ typically read DR6 or less – in extreme cases even as little as 2 or 3.

As a rule of thumb, anything with an overall reading of DR12 or more will sound very dynamic – and in this case, the central DR meters of the plugin will stay green much of the time. ‘Louder’ material will sometimes have less range than this – any less than 8dB runs the risk of sounding squashed and crushed, and the DR meters start to fade from green to orange to red to represent this.

So, to ensure you aren’t over-compressing your mix – keep the meters in the green for most of the time. Not all of the time, but a track where they are always red is almost certainly pushed too hard.

It’s that simple !

Well actually, it’s not quite that simple.

More detail

Firstly, if you’re making electronic music, or using lots of synths and sample loops, the sounds you have may already have quite a limited crest factor, or “DR” reading. And so does a flute note, for that matter ! So, if your mix is only DR8 without any extra compression, don’t worry – that’s just the way it is naturally.

And also, this “green” rule-of-thumb applies to mixing. If you’re using the meter in mastering, pushing up into the orange and occasionally red is probably OK – but use your ears and remember there is always a price to be paid.

One of the cleverest things about the DR meter is that it works independently of the overall level of the music. So, something very loud, crushed and distorted, like, say – oh, I don’t know – Metallica’s “Death Magnetic”, for example – will be in the red, almost all the time – even if you turn the level down.

This means you can objectively compare how ‘squashed’ different recordings are, regardless of the overall level. Which in turn makes it a great mixing tool – if you over-compress everything in your mix, the meters will show you’re in the red, even if the overall level isn’t that high, yet.

Compare with reference tracks

Try it yourself – fire it up and watch how the meters react to your favourite recordings. Remember though they may have been pushed to a higher level in the mastering. Try comparing older CDs from the late eighties and earlier 90s – usually the overall level will be lower, and compared to releases from the last few years they will be more dynamic, ie. the DR values will be larger.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that you need a low DR reading for a ‘loud’ sound – to see why this isn’t true, just click here.

(Be aware, though – the TT Meter isn’t suitable for comparing vinyl to other formats. To see why, click here.)

It’s important to note though that the realtime DR meter only gives readings at an instant. And, it’s quite permissible (and necessary) to push into the red at some points. To get an overall measurement of a track’s ‘dynamic range’, you can use the off-line version.

Find out more about loudness and dynamics

There’s loads more information about loudness and mastering in general on this site – to get started, click here.

And to find out more about my new Dynameter plugin, which aims to update and improve on the TT Meter by offering a zoomable history graph, plus the ability to choose your own dynamics targets, especially for online streaming – and see at a glance when you’re achieving them – click here.

Comments

This plugin is really useful, I’ll be making of use of it while mixing all of my songs from now on.

One little thing though, even without any compressors at all on any instruments, quite a few of my songs have an average dynamic range of about 11. If 14 is the sweet spot, is it worth using dynamic range expanders to push it up to 14dB, or should I just leave it as it is? Right now, I’m thinking of just leaving it.

First, remember that the meter shows the range at an instant, whereas the recommendation of DR14 is over a whole track. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that even though your mix is often at DR11, overall it will be lower.

But even if the overall value is 11, I wouldn’t try to expand it just for the sake of it. Many fantastic-sounding recordings have DRs between 12 and 10 – this is one reason I’m a little sceptical about the Pleasurize Music Foundation’s goals – I think DR14 is unnecessarily large.

On the other hand, I don’t think there’s any harm in setting ambitious targets, and I’d rather have a ballpark figure that has more dynamic range rather than less !

I used the offline program to find out the overall DR of the mix, and it’s about DR8, but that’s because there are points in the song where the DR is 2 to 4dB because there’s about about a minute toward the end of the song where it’s just a low pulsating noise, which I think throughs off the overall DR a lot.

For the majority of the song, it fluctuates between 6dB and 16dB, during the heaviest loudest section of the song it stays pretty solid at 11dB, and the last minute of the song hovers at about 2 to 4dB DR.

In the TT DR manual (which is good to read) they recommend using a good brickwall limiter, adding that some of them “don’t deliver what they promise”. Would recommend one of these *good* limiter to use (I’m on Windows/Cubase, so VST one would be great).

@Toad – I agree, the end section is skewing the overall reading. This highlights a limitation of measuring things like loudness in an automated way, and why you can’t beat a real mastering engineer 😉 If anything your track may be a little too dynamic at the moment, in my opinion…!

@jc – I’m not the best person to ask about this – I almost exclusively use the brickwall limiter in the TC System 6000, which is only available as a plugin if you have their PowerCore card. Having said that, I’ve used the Waves L1 & L2 with some success. Search over on the Sound On Sound forum, this gets discussed fairly regularly there. I think people like the Ozone stuff, for example.

Fwiw I don’t like using limiters for more than a dB or two of gain reduction, usually.

I haven’t tried the Waves meters, but yes, the TT meter would be useful – tracks with a similar RMS level and a similar dynamic range will generally sound the same level – provided they have consistent EQs.

Another tool you could look into is Audioleak – although it doesn’t give you real-time feedback, it includes the A-weighted loudness figures, which attempt to take different EQ curves into account.

In my experience almost any RMS-type meter is a big help, but you also need to “learn” it’s characteristics, and know when to take it’s readings with a pinch of salt, too.

While I absolutely support the cause of ending the Loudness War, I’m a bit worried by some of the comments here..

Question 1 should be “does the mix sound as good as I can make it?”

All of this business of fretting about whether the DR is close enough to 14dB seems counter-productive to me. I just hope people don’t forget to keep using the most valuable mixing tool of all.. their ears.

the loudness war has been going on for a long time, and yes its getting worse. we can thank the 90s for this problem. heres my take and its simple. mainstream rock in the 90s wasnt exactly detailed or intricate. the more you compress power chords, the better they sound…crank up everything else and you have a mess that covers up the simplicity. are we getting louder to compensate for lack of musicianship? and then selling it for $15.99? seems so. load a grunge track from 1996 and look at those waves…pretty much says it all. I really like pro tools because its pure and clean, you have to work hard to trash your tracks…loudness is a mastering phase chop, not a tracking chop.

It should also be noted that even the Pleasurize Music Foundation recommends different DR values for different styles of music. Those can be found at their website, even if you dont decide to sign in. Because obviously Techno needs a lower DR than Jazz. Another interesting website is the DR-Database, where users can submit the DR value they found using the offline DR-meter. A bit like Discogs with DR values (http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?sort=dr&order=desc)

Cutting hotter masters has been happening from the 1960’s it has to be said that with the advent of digital look ahead limiters that the situation has been abused and yes there is needless distortion in many instances (often client driven) but I sit on the fence as some music actually sounds a little better for limiting IMO.(improved density). Limiting does not mean instant auidble distortion. There are compromises (like any knob movement in mastering) to be had and I think keeping an open mind is key. The main issue is that the ear responds to level and louder initially appears to be better for any given volume control.

A good mastering engineer can hear the trade offs clearly, but maybe we need something this extreme to counter the ridiculous trend.

– and, individual tracks reaching DR6 can work, depending on the material. But I firmly believe (my ears tell me) that an average of less than DR8 for an album damages pretty much anything – in the sense that it would have sounded better if it could have had more DR. Great example – “Hopes and Fears” by Keane. A classic album, sounds great. But it’s DR6, and would have sounded better as DR8 or more, I think.

The big problem is that right now hardly anything is more than DR6 – DR5 seems to be the benchmark 🙁

I’ve been aware of the loudness “thing” for a long time – I think it really ramped up when people jumped to digital and had to convert a lot of stuff to CD. Tape has its own natural compression which is making a comeback (just ask jack White III).
In my work, i tend to record willy-nilly and then go back, find and turn off compression (and yes for me that includes tube emulators as well) and build some aux or outboard path that’s focussed on a part.
The end result (cd, dvd, streamed aif or mp3) is another consideration. I could probably get along without compression (but not EQ) though using things like WaveArt’s Multidynamics plugin with TT meter are quite useful for tweaking life into track.

Well my contribution to the dynamic range day was some vinyl premasters (being honest they would have retained ther dynamic range largely anyway because of the medium limitations and a thought for the lathe engineer) but nonetheless it did have me thinking so I guess it has done it’s job.

Yes the loudness wars is in part related to look ahead brick wall limiting , a digital process.

Funny that when I was at college a limiter was an extreme dynamic process. Largely cause they sounded awful, but because of the relatively reduced side effects the situation has slowly pushed them into a state which could be termed “abuse”.

The preferred dynamic range really depends on the genre of music as some pieces don’t need much dynamic range (at least DR8). As long as it sounds uncluttered and distorted it should make a pretty nice recording.

By the way, no matter how many times I open the TT Dynamic Range Meter, it won’t respond unless I just close it (clicking on the ‘load’ button doesn’t do anything). I’m on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

I’m not saying all music should have the same DR, just that less than DR8 starts to sound bad in any genre, IMO.

Is it possible to make good-sounding stuff with DR6 ? Yes, if you’re skilled and clever. Does it sound better than it would have at DR8 or more ? No. Is an album with average DR6 more fatiguing than one with an average of DR6 ? Yes.

I can’t comment on your issue with the meter, I’m afraid – I would try contacting Brainworx directly.

It depends on the genre, recording and artistic intent ! But my rule of thumb is that the quality starts to suffer if you go higher than -12 RMS (A-weighted) which is around -10 “raw” RMS (depending on the frequency content) at the loudest moments. You can push it a couple of dBs more, sometimes, but not constantly.

Very true. But in that case you don’t really need a meter to tell you you’re not over-compressing 🙂 However I would probably be asking myself – “is there enough dynamic interest in this song”, though. If it’s an ambient drone piece the answer is probably “yes”, but sometimes it’ll be worth considering adding some more dynamic elements to the mix.

I agree with other posters that “good” DR is an artistic choice – what works for one kind of music isn’t always right for another. I’m not a fan of crushed DR, but some producers may want that sound. In my opinion, what we should really be fighting for is an agreed target for the perceived average volume level for a mastered release. This is what they are doing in TV with the ITU-R 1770 spec. This would give engineers the freedom to master with as much or as little dynamic range as they like, within reason. If a producer prefers to crush and distort their mixes to death then they can do that, but the end listener won’t get a product that’s significantly louder than another release with a greater DR. If the listener wants it loud, they can turn the volume knob up. Music would potentially sound far better, and the listener can play one album or track after another without getting blown across the room when they switch from Talking Book to Death Magnetic (extreme example!). I realise it would require the industry to police itself somehow, to prevent the whole loudness war starting up again. Is it a pipe-dream? It’s a case of explaining the problem, and getting people on board. 35 years ago in the UK, no-one wore seatbelts and drinking and driving was almost socially-acceptable. Sweden managed to change from driving on the left to driving on the right overnight. Big changes do happen.

It’s a perfectly natural oboe sample. Yet the TT Dynamic Range Meter says its DR is 3dB, which http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/ considers as overlimited (“bad”). I am aware an oboe sample is not a piece of music, but still, caution concerning the TT Dynamic Range Meter results come to mind.

………….

The cause according to which music shouldn’t be overcompressed may be perfectly just and noble, but I’m not sure such confusion between the Crest Factor (which is used by the TT Dynamic Range Meter) AND dynamics AND overlimiting really helps…

Ian, do you have any direct involvement in the DR movements? I think a minimum of DR14 is too excessive and it should be lowered to 10 because different genres of music need different amounts of compression. A level of 10 will prevent brickwalling just fine and will allow an easier transition for labels or producers who are used to louder and more compressed mastering.

@ Jorano, Since last year I’m on the board of directors of Turn Me Up, so I have some influence ! And, I agree that DR14 is a very ambitious goal – that’s why an average level of DR8 is all that’s needed to qualify for the Dynamic Range Day challenge:

As far as Turn Me Up goes though, everyone who signed up there did so when DR14 was the target, so I don’t think we can change that without consulting them first. But, I’ll certainly raise this and talk about shifting the emphasis in future.

Hot topic i must say, i think you hit the nail on the head by saying the DR lv is genre dependant..

Those who clearly dismiss the whole DR war are obviously being deafened by what they listen to lol

This DR lv is all new to me but listening to modern music you can tell that instruments are having the living shiz squeeded outta them with heavy compression..

Ive tested my tracks and im shocked that most are around 5 ~ 7 :() so im a little gutted about that..
However the music i produce i mainly sample and soft synth based which as you have said are already compressed : /

For me im not too bothered about the end master volum level, i would like to get the distinctive polished sound that you can hear each and every instrument in the mix as clean as if there in the room with you.. im not sure how they do that maybe a punchy compressor setting along with good EQing i dont know but if you know what i mean let me lol.

I think that EQing is one of the most underestimated practises in mixing a track.

Thanks again for this great info, i will defo take DR into account in my future tracks and i might even try remixing my tracks.

[…] (linked in my signature): How do we perceive loudness? How loud is too loud? How to avoid overcompressing your mix Using compression to add punch, warmth and power to your mix You'll find more articles by Ian over […]